Description

The events of the past year demonstrated that the world entered a new period of flux and uncertainty at borders. While scholars have noted the expansion of walls, security infrastructure, migrant detention, and militarized enforcement for a decade or more, in 2017 actions that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago became the new normal. The papers in this session document and analyze the new (ab)normal at borders by considering these questions: What are the strategies and tactics the state, and non-state actors, use to prevent the movement of people? Where are the locations they are put into place? What impact do they have on people on the move and people who live in the ever widening borderlands? What do these changes tell us theoretically about borders, sovereignty, mobility and the state?